MUSDOKI: Beginning of a writing marathon (interview)

NNW: Let?s begin with the title and what the novel is all about.
Ahmed Maiwada: The title, MUSDOKI, is an envelope word. Envelope word in poetry means, you fuse the words together and come up with one word and in the process clipping or removing one or two things to arrive at something that sounds well. So that is how I was able to envelope Musa and Maidoki, the first name and the surname of the main character in the novel to arrive at MUSDOKI. This is a novel, and a novel is a story book about people, set in a particular place and time. This novel is a story about a character called Musa Maidoki, from his teenage years in the northern part of Nigeria to his development and growth till when he becomes a successful practising lawyer.
The novel opens with Musa Maidoki encountering a spirit in Birnin Kebbi. It was a brief encounter and he is able to kind of dump her off. But unknown to him, she changes colour and form and meets him again in Lagos when he goes there for the Nigerian Law School certificate ? the Barrister at Law Certificate. She comes to him in a different guise and they become friends and by the time he knows she is the one, she is beginning to make him to do the things she has always wanted him to do when he met her earlier in his years. This is somebody who grows up from a cultured northern Nigerian family - Hausa traditional culture. And this is a woman that wants him to do something that is unethical. Mind you, apart from being a lawyer, this character is also a poet and a writer. So she wants him to channel his talent into writing for the devil, for evil purposes; to deploy the power of his words to work for a magazine that is championing bad things in the society. But he says no, he writes for the purpose of making the society a better place, not for that other purpose. And she tries many other things to make him do this and that. So in the end, without actually fighting, he is able to resist. But then, that resistance also flared her anger and so she starts dogging him up and down. At a point she almost caused him his death in an accident. In fact, she becomes hell-bent on killing him.
I used images for them. For her, I used the image of a dove and for him, I used the image of a hawk. Now, we know hawks have very long talons, sharp. Doves, on the other hand, don?t even have spleen, and so there is no bitterness in them. Hawks are predators and they can pounce on and devour a dove. So this hawk meets a dove and she tries to devour him, then she discovers that this is a dove with iron feathers. That is how the story goes.
Would you say this is magical realism?
It depends on one?s understanding of magical realism. My own understanding of magical realism is, something that is fantastic, a blend of realism and fantasy. There is no novel that is real, not even history. History can be factual, but there is also an element of imagination, an inventiveness, in it. So, to be honest, even those who claim to be realists or those who want to see realistic works are not being sincere and honest with themselves. In a novel, you pick up from the real things in life and invent a few things from your own imagination and you join them together. It may look real, but in all honesty, you are blending the real and fantasy. To me, all novels meet the standard of that definition called magical realism.
I notice that some critics of Ben Okri?s writings, especially The Famished Road, believe that his works are just fantasy. And he tried to say look, this is real because in Africa where I came from these things are real. So it depends on your own cultural background. In Africa and even elsewhere there is belief in spirits who are unseen. And some of them at times cross from that unseen zone into the seen and interact with human beings. That is actually part of what I?m trying to do in this work.
To what extent would you say you are part of the novel, since the main character seems to share some of your attributes; you are a lawyer, a writer and he is also a lawyer, a writer and so on?
Yes, we share quite a lot of things. And this goes to confirm what I was saying about the real things and the imagined things. Any writer who writes fiction must observe something; either observe himself or his neighbour. So I actually lent a lot of myself into the main character. Some may say I?m enigmatic, eccentric and so on. But that is where the similarity ends. I used the skeleton of my whole life, but the flesh and the soul is a different person entirely; an imagined character.
At a time Nigerian writers are writing explicitly about the Nigerian situation, the politics, the corruption, etc, you are writing something that seems different. What informed this style?
Novel writing is actually an exercise in entertainment. The chief purpose of writing a story is to entertain. Because if that is not the case, why should someone else take it and read? This same thing that we are writing about, people see it in their lives. The streets that we write about, the sky, the earth and everything, people have experienced them. So what is it so special, so different from the real thing that they are seeing and experiencing? Even some of those characters are also encountered by some of those readers of yours. I know that quite a number of times someone would pick up a book and after reading he would say it seems I know this character. So, the same thing that he knows you are putting it back to him in a very refined and entertaining way that would make him go through a different experience entirely.
However, I believe also that in spite of the fact that you want to entertain, you also have one or two messages to send across without boring the reader and trying to show him that he is a small kid, you are teaching him something. That is why I believe that, in literary works, whatever you do, try as much as possible to coat that bitter pill, that message that you have, with something sweet. Put the sweetness on top like the capsule that we swallow; the healing bitterness is inside. That is one of the differences between pop fiction or trash fiction and literary work. In this kind of fiction, it is all sweet entirely. Yes, somebody will swallow it and feel the sweetness. But sweetness in most cases is not even good, it doesn?t heal, it has no medicinal value at all. So that is why one should balance the two. And I try to do that. As much as I try to entertain in this work, I also try to send a message. I don?t know if I should talk about the message, since someone else may read it and have a different meaning entirely.
Let?s have an insight into the message.
The cover of the book is in green and white colours; the flag of Nigeria. So, without being told, you will know that there is an imagery of Nigeria there. So I think this is a Nigerian story. The main character tries to live a straightforward and honest life. He works hard to be somebody. However, the forces against him want him to do crooked things before he can succeed. And they say if he doesn?t do that he would never succeed. Throughout the book, I try to make the forces against him, especially the hawkish character, which I named Christine and/or Rita, very strong. Christine and Rita are two but one character. They look different; one is taller than the other, one is a half-caste the other one is a full-blooded black lady, though pretty as well. There is something common in them and they are the same person. They have green eyes and they wear green tops. To me, it symbolises Nigeria. That half-caste light brown skin represents the northern part where the earth is brown. And down south is a different Nigeria; you may think it is not the same country, but it is the same. The two women symbolise Nigeria. In Nigeria, you have to be a rogue to succeed. So I?m saying that Musa Maidoki eventually succeeds against all odds. He succeeds even though he refuses to bow down to those forces. The message is; don?t ever believe that you can succeed only if you indulge in corruption. All these things will fizzle away and you will eventually emerge as the person you want to be in the society without allowing yourself to go the way that this country wants you to go. It is unfortunate, but that is how the country wants us to be. If you are not a politician that loots, if you are not in a cult or secret society and so on, you won?t make it. I say it is a lie!
Finally, from reactions from critics so far, what would you say is the fate of this book?
Well, from what people have said about the book, I think I have done something with which my readers will be entertained and educated. The reaction has been overwhelming. Things have been said about this book that actually make me very happy to become a novelist. In fact, I?m happier as a novelist than I have ever been in all the years that I?ve been a poet. The novelists welcome me in their midst, quite contrary to how the poets received me in their midst when I first came in. I?m so delighted. By this I can comfortably say this book shall certainly outlive me. And it shall set the standards of the other works that I?m working on. This is just to tell people that, look, Ahmed Maiwada is not just a poet. I have written this book in a very dramatic fashion. Possibly drama may follow, so that I would have gone across all the genres of literature by the time I?m done. But I think MUSDOKI could be where the actual race of the writing marathon may have begun.

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